


Becoming Schoen

by DarkAngelAzrael



Category: Weiß Kreuz
Genre: And Cram Sessions For The Bechdel Test, Because Schreient Needs Development, Character Development, Gen, Recruitment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-29
Updated: 2016-11-29
Packaged: 2018-09-02 23:46:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8688256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkAngelAzrael/pseuds/DarkAngelAzrael
Summary: Before Schoen was Schoen, she was Kitaura Karen, a model. A woman with a past, but less future than she wants. Cue an invitation.





	

_"Mama! Mama, look at the lady on TV, isn't she pretty? She has light hair like me!"_

_"Yes, Karen. America-san is very pretty," Karen's mother said with a tired but willing smile for her daughter. The daughter who looked far more like her long-gone soldier father than her dark-haired, Japanese mother. Far more like him than any of her full-blooded Japanese neighbors or classmates._

_"Do you think I can be as pretty as her someday?" It was almost wistful. "Pretty enough that people will stop making fun of my hair?"_

_The arms that wrapped around her were warm and protective. Karen breathed in the clean, lemony smell that always hung around her mother as she snuggled close._

_"Much prettier than that," her mother told her softly._

Karen shook herself out of memory as she fingered the corners of her eyes and mouth, peering at herself in the well-lit mirror. That wasn't a line there, was it? She bit her lip and tried not to pout, reaching for a jar of skin cream. She dipped impeccably manicured fingers into the jar and rubbed the cream in.

She might not have ever made it to the beauty pageant stages, but the modelling catwalk was nearly as good. Karen wasn't a child anymore; the comments about her hair hadn't gone away and she didn't expect them to. She was satisfied enough that they were snide, catty asides that dripped with jealousy. As long as she knew, and they knew, that she was more beautiful than them, that was good enough.

But she had to stay at the top.

The soft knock at her door made her start in her chair. Karen clapped the top back on the jar and tucked it away, wiping her fingers clean before standing to open the door. The woman on the other side was everything Karen hated; the Japanese ideal. Dark hair, pale skin, a composed and elegant bearing.

"Are you new to the agency? I thought I knew everyone," Karen said coldly. The other woman smiled and shook her head.

"I'm not with the agency at all, but I do have permission to be back here. My...patron..." Something about the way she said the word more than hinted that the relationship was more intimate than that. "..admires your fire and your passionate beauty. As do I. Neither of us would forgive ourselves if we let that rose wither when we are developing a means to stop it."

The open, unhesitating admission of admiration from someone who was everything Karen wasn't startled her and drained some of her instinctive animosity. It was enough for her to really listen to the rest of the woman's words. A means to stop... "What do you mean?"

"My Masafumi is brilliant. You'll understand immediately when you meet him. The horrors of aging, of death, he will conquer them. We want you to be a part of it."

"That's impossible," Karen replied, but it lacked assurance. She wanted to believe. The other woman's smile grew and she shook her head again.

"Not for him." Her voice had all the certainty Karen's lacked. Karen glanced back at her vanity, the lit mirror, the drawer that hid everything she used to try to stave off the inevitable. There were no middle-aged models. When she turned back, the woman's hand was extended to her. Slowly, she reached back.

"Who are you?"

"My name is Aoi Chizuru, Kitaura-san. But you may call me Hel."

 


End file.
